A Year On From: ITP 2016

2016 ITPers Dora Jok (Sarawak Museum), Ruchira Verma (independent/CSMVS) and Shreen Amin (Egyptian Museum in Cairo) share how being fellows of the ITP has impacted upon their professional lives over the past year.

Dora Jok

For me personally, the ITP really helped me in my work as a museum professional. I had never attended a course like the ITP which was well-rounded, cross-functional and cross-skills, with planning for exhibitions, marketing, documentation, storage, packaging, handling objects and engaging volunteers. I learnt so much.

Going back home after the ITP 2016, I initiated a group of volunteers to help in documenting Iban ritual clothes and fine arts, which we had never done in my museum before. Engaging volunteers to sort the objects really helped us in tackling the issues of manpower, depth of knowledge and conservation.

We are also embarking on the documentation and sorting of more ethnographic objects in 2018. Training from the ITP 2016 really helped me in how to plan and what to do for that project.

Among the best experiences were that I managed to write two articles for the Sarawak Museum Journal on Berawan paintings, and one article for the Borneo International Beads Conference on my documentation work of beads. In fact, I presented a paper on beads in Kalimantan, Indonesia in November 2016. The skills, courage and confidence for this were derived from the ITP 2016.

Ruchira Verma

ITP 2016 was an educational and wonderful experience.  During our stay in London, we got to interact with and become friends with professionals from all over the world.

The sessions taught me a lot. Something that I think about regularly is interpretation and how a lot of information can be conveyed in the best way possible.  Digital interaction and how it can be used to enhance the user experience is another thing that I took away from the ITP and I regularly think about.

I met up with Vaidehi Savnal (CSMVS, Mumbai), on my recent trips to Mumbai and the best part of that is that we will be working together for the upcoming exhibition India and the World, being held at CSMVS, in collaboration with the British Museum. I have been hired as the Social Media Manager for the exhibition.  I am excited for the exhibition and the opportunity it will provide to implement the learnings of ITP.

Miss you all. Love from Pune!

Shreen Amin

The ITP training programme helped me a lot to develop my skills, especially in marketing and exhibition approaches. I learned so many ideas that I hope will be applied in Egypt and I am trying now to apply some of them as far as I can. I am still in contact with ITP friends, especially Yolanda Theodoropoulou (Acropolis Museum).

Experiences from the ITP that I have applied in my field of work:
-Museum trail (The Colours of Ancient Egypt children’s trail)
-Hands-on programme (I chose some objects from the Children’s Museum replicas to be the major objects for a new specialised hands-on programme for children)
-Museum display (when I went back to Egypt, I started to redisplay the objects of the Children’s Museum. Replicas of Ancient Egyptian history and Lego objects are now displayed together)

This is the official page of the Children’s Museum of the Egyptian Museum, to follow our programmes:
https://www.facebook.com/Childrens-Museum-of-Lego-647147588649441/?fref=nf